"What are these assets that you talk about? The Euro is not backed by Gold or any other physical asset; in fact, it seems to be even more nebulous than the USD.

"What are these assets that you talk about? The Euro is not backed by Gold or any other physical asset; in fact, it seems to be even more nebulous than the USD." The Euro is backed by 'high quality' assets such as real estate. When a bank wants Euros, they put up assets as collateral for it. In recent years, there has been a lot of debate because of the 'lowering the quality' of such assets, which is kind of a form of QE. You want the details? Here are the exact details of what you can exchange for credit if you are a bank in the Eurozone: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/coll/html/index.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/coll/html/index.en.html